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Ok I have a new HBX and will check firmware and do so more test under real sky

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Greetings to: Philip Neidlinger (and all others...)

Well, the above post from ur7x pretty well sums things up right now. I am an Alt/AZ user, and I love it !!!

Andrew Johansen (Australia) and I are still doing tests, and he is studying the results. I just sent him some new data this morning. This, of course, is studying the Polar alignment issues...

I am sure this will all work out. The interesting part will be what is done when Andrew figures it out. So far, we have not had Meade in the loop (unless they are following this thread).

If you are looking for a polar mount, then i would suggest a little patience for a few more days, and lets see what Andrew comes up with. We have an active user here (Dennis and Kevin) that are polar users. And their new (replacement) Audiostar should be to them in a day or so, and we should then acquire some more data. Then we will all know more.

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I just have to ask, why do you keep referring to autostar as "audio star?"

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Does it talk to you now.

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And for the love of Galileo, can't anyone just do a star trail PE test on one of these things?

All you have to to is plop it down in equatorial mode with a lousy polar alignment, point at a star overhead, hook up a camera and let it go for 30 minutes with the shutter open. That's it. When you look at the image, the stars will have been drifting north as a result if the poor polar alignment. Periodic error gets recorded as wiggle in the star trails. See, it's easy.

-Rich

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Andrew,

You'll forgive me for posting this here (I hope),

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Absolutely. The more in the one thread, the merrier.
Also Thks to Kev and Jerry for cross checks.
Now it gets interesting.
David was reporting about a 20 to 30 RAmin "increase" in RA
over a one hour test when polar. Ie running horribly slow.
My bench tests using LX90 motors, (but LX80 selected in the Hbx)
gave a 0.6 RAmin "decrease" in RA over one hour.
Ie i "sped up"
This 0.6 RAMin perHr lines up with the 1.01155 factor i saw in the code.

Getting Toms results this morning cheered me up a bit
as his numbers agreed with mine.

However
both Kev and Jerrys results agree with David
ie they show an RA "increase" of about 30 RAmins per hour
ie running at 50% speed.

The fact the "gotos" appear to work would indicate the
encoders are working correctly, so all i can think of now
is there are different motorcards out there,
and one lot has a problem with its internal motor speed loop.
That sorta gets destroyed by the fact that Davids scope ( at least )
tracks perfectly in AltAz.
I guess the next step is for Kev and Jerry to do real sky
altaz then polar tests, to confirm the results,
ie AltAz works but Polar keeps track of position, but tracks slow.

Edit.
To test the encoder theory under a real sky, do a proper polar setup/ align then do a goto and centre the target.
If it is clearly drifting after that, just let it go for say 10 minutes or more.
Now, without doing anything else, just hit goto again.
The scope will still have its prev targets coords loaded, so if it detects a delta between current and target, it will slew back to target.
If the scope slews back and recentres the target correctly, that proves that the scope still knows "where it is" ie the encoders etc are working, just its not tracking.

It is certainly looking weird.

Andrew

Edited by OzAndrewJ (07/13/12 08:01 PM)

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